Seafood businesses file lawsuit against BP

KEN FOUNTAIN

Published 12:00 am, Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A popular Beaumont Cajun seafood restaurant and other local seafood businesses filed a lawsuit Tuesday against energy giant BP and other corporations, alleging that the massive oil spill stemming from the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig has damaged the Gulf Coast fishing industry.

The complaint, filed Tuesday by the large Beaumont firm Provost Umphrey and assigned to Judge Milton Gunn Shuffield's 136th District Court, is the first lawsuit filed in Jefferson County associated with the April 20 explosion off the coast of Louisiana.

It joins more than 130 lawsuits already filed against BP in Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, a number that continues to grow, according to The Associated Press.

The plaintiffs in the case include Bret Floyd, owner of Beaumont-based Floyd's Cajun Seafood House and related businesses; Tim James of Lumberton, owner of Catfish Cabin Inc.; and the owners of other seafood businesses based in Webster, Georgia and Alabama.

It names as defendants British-based BP and several of its subsidiaries, which were operating the Deepwater Horizon under a lease from Transocean, its owner, also named as a defendant. The other defendants are Anadarko Petroleum Corp., based in The Woodlands, and MOEX Offshore 2007, LLC, a Houston-based subsidiary of a Japanese firm, both of which own interests in the oil well; Houston-based Halliburton Energy Services, which was performing cementing operations on the oil well and well cap; Houston-based Cameron International Corp., manufacturer of the oil rig's blowout preventer valve, which investigators have said failed to activate at the time of the explosion; and Houston-based M-I, LLC, which provided drilling fluids to the rig.